Sir Bob Jones: Language abuse

I bought my first industrial building way back in 1963 and since then estimate I’ve owned about a thousand or so across New Zealand, but mainly in Australia.

Back in the early 1960s the Aussies used to dismissively refer to them as sheds but soon abandoned that as the market grew and as here, described them as warehouses or factories, depending on their use.

Garrick Tremain: Read all about it

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on the plight of newspapers! 

Bob Jones: Pot and kettle hypocrisy?

Stuff recently published an (accurate) article on a phenomenon they described as shrinkflation.

This is the practice of manufacturers combatting rising costs by maintaining their historic nominal prices and packaging but reducing the amount of contents.

They gave numerous examples, such as Beehive matches in which the unchanged matchbox now contains 45 matches instead of the traditional 50, or a Cadbury’s block of chocolate decreasing in size by 10%, and so it went.

Their one glaring omission however, was Stuff’s own product, namely daily newspapers. In the face not so much of increased production costs but instead a near collapsed demand thanks to electronic instant news, their newspapers today are at best half the size of 25 years ago.

This is not “shrinkflation” but instead dwarfism; unmatched in its degree by any other product.

I’m a newspaper addict and deeply regret this phenomenon but must resign myself to their inevitable and imminent disappearance, a world-wide phenomenon.

Sir Bob Jones is a renowned author, columnist , property investor, and former politician, who blogs at No Punches Pulled HERE.

Karl du Fresne: Will newspapers become the new craft breweries?

It’s rare these days to hear about any development in the news media that’s worth celebrating, but the announcement that the Wairarapa Times-Age is reverting to local ownership is a tonic.

After 12 years in what is now the NZME (previously known as APN) stable, the Masterton-based Monday-Friday paper is being bought by its general manager, Andrew Denholm. My guess is that other local money is involved, although I have no inside knowledge.

Mike Butler: Grievance history and the press

For those who question continued complaints about the “wicked white coloniser” in the mainstream media, the abridged letter published below shows the difficulties a reader had in getting his response to misleading claims by other letter writers in a provincial newspaper.

It became clear to the reader that the long delay in publishing his response to an opinion column that contained untrue assertions that that the intent of the newspaper was not to publish his criticism, so he sent an e-mail to the editor which to his great surprise produced results.

Karl du Fresne: Are we really witnessing the last days of newspapers?

Back in the 1990s when I was working for Wellington’s now-defunct Evening Post, we experienced a series of printing press breakdowns which meant the paper was repeatedly late coming out. I recall an unusual sight as I drove home late in the afternoons. Along the streets leading to my house, people were standing at their gates gazing along the footpath to see whether the paper was on its way. It was striking to see how keenly people anticipated their paper each day and how discombobulated they were when it didn’t arrive on time.  

I thought of this recently as I read a book on the state of the New Zealand and Australian newspaper industries. Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers was written by New Zealand journalist Rachel Buchanan, who has worked for papers on both sides of the Tasman. It’s a pessimistic title – some would say unduly so. But there’s no doubt newspapers are going through a period of unprecedented upheaval and no one quite knows where or how it’s going to end.